


Cold Heat

by isitanywonder



Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-12
Updated: 2019-06-16
Packaged: 2020-05-02 02:36:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19190212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isitanywonder/pseuds/isitanywonder
Summary: Post Season Two, Episode Eight. My version of what might happen in season three.Eve wakes up in hospital unsure of who to trust. Villanelle is out there somewhere laying low, as best she possibly can. They're even now, right? That should be the end. But of course, it isn't.





	1. You're to Blame

 

You're to Blame

Somewhere between hitting the ground and fully waking up again, Eve dreams of snow. It’s hot in Rome and she can feel sweat or blood or something wet all over her back but as she loses consciousness suddenly everything is white and chilly, like the winter.  
There are flurries of snow falling down outside a window, a square wooden window that would belong in a cabin. She dreams of going out into carpets of it, pure and white and freezing, and lying down in the middle, looking up at a perfectly overcast sky. She moves her arms and legs to make snow angels, like she did as a child. There is silence, crisp and everywhere. She doesn’t know if this moment lasts a few seconds or weeks, years, months.  
She hears buzzing, like a phone ringing. Not ringing, being rung, like she has dialled a number, Niko or Villanelle, the ringing that you get when you are waiting and waiting and waiting for someone else to pick up and they don’t. She hears it and she feels the noise in her legs and ear drums and her back before she slides out of consciousness again.  
There are the things she remembers after that:  
The blades of a helicopter  
Shouting  
The gummy, sticky smell of lipstick.  
Laughter  
A grin, her grin, in the dark  
Looking down and seeing a bloody raw hole, Villanelle’s body, it must be, exactly where the knife went in.  
Niko leaning over her and crying, saying we can start over now, it’s okay, it’s over we can start again.  
The face of that man, again and again, his head being mashed in half, the sound, the smell, already dead, splattering everywhere all over the floor and Villanelle, gasping for air behind him covered in blood, blood, red, wet, bile rising, breathing heavy over and over.  
Snow.  
Always the snow.

When she wakes, she is in the hospital, a private room. Everything is off white, and dull sunlight is coming in through the window. Carolyn sits beside her in a plastic chair that looks like it belongs in a primary school. She is wearing a perfectly ironed grey suit, one leg folded over the other, a paper in her lap and a coffee paused in the air halfway to her lips.  
“Ah, Eve,” she says when she sees her waking. She folds the paper one handed, without spilling the coffee, and places it on Eve’s beside table. She wants to look at it, the date, what’s the date, how far away is…  
“Glad you’re awake,” Carolyn says.  
“Have you been sat beside my bed this whole time?” Eve says. Her words come out more quietly than she expects, and raspy, and she realises she has no grasp on how long “this whole time” is.  
“Of course not,” Carolyn says, “That would be a complete waste of my time.”  
There is a while before anyone speaks again. Eve tries to keep hold of the blurred fractures of the memories after she was shot, tries to sort into order and into what might be real and not. Carolyn waits.  
“What happened?” Eve says. She knows everything that happened before the gun went off and can recall it with complete clarity: Carolyn telling her she was a pawn in a bigger game, bringing down an axe into that guy’s head, Villanelle’s lips an inch away from hers, then the shot. She remembers the pain as it the bullet went in. What she doesn’t know who to trust anymore so better to play dumb.  
“Villanelle shot you, Eve,” Carolyn says, “and left you to die in a Roman Coliseum.”  
“No,” Eve says, trying to push herself up in bed but her arms weakening underneath her “That can’t be true. She’s on our side.”  
She’s still so tired. When she closes her eyes, she sees snow.  
“Must have been someone else that put a bullet in your side then, Eve.”  
Eve looks down, and slowly pushes back the covers. There is a tube connected to her hand and taped over to keep it in place. She is in a paper hospital gown. The room smells like chemicals.  
“No need to look at it now,” Carolyn says, “I will leave in a minute. Give you some privacy.”  
Eve stares at her gown where it is cut open and reveals a thick bandage. She doesn’t know if she wants to see it, depending on how bloody it is. She wants to scrub her mind clean like this hospital.  
“Is there anything else you want to know?”  
“Would you tell me if I asked?”  
“We’ll see.”  
“How long have I been out?” Eve says, a little too quickly.  
“About three weeks.”  
Up until this moment Eve hasn’t really felt anything. She is numb from her chest down to her pelvis. She doesn’t feel feverish or sick or in pain. Her head is fuzzy, but it feels more like being tipsy at a Christmas party. Three weeks. She’s been unconscious three weeks. Three hours would be enough time for a clean get away, let alone three weeks. Now, her side starts to throb, and her chest feels hollow.  
“You were taken to a hospital in Rome where you were given emergency surgery to remove the bullet and have the wound sown up. As soon as you were stable, we had you airlifted to London,” she pauses, “First class.”  
“I passed out from a side wound?”  
“You were shot, Eve. Give yourself some credit.”  
“Why have I been out for so long though? Is that normal?”  
“The doctor said it was from the pain. Your body shut down. In order to handle it.”  
“Who found me?”  
“Excuse me?”  
“Who found me,” Eve says again, “Who called the ambulance?”  
“A concerned tourist I expect. Can’t be sure.”  
The clouds shift outside and the sunlight fades. Carolyn takes a sip of her coffee. Eve thinks another question over in her head, imagines asking it, then decides not to, decides not to care, pretends not to care…  
“Where is she?”  
Carolyn smiles slightly, “Villanelle?”  
“Yeah,” Eve says, her voice weak, pain radiating on her side in a dull ache.  
“We don’t know.”  
“You don’t know?”  
“Witnesses testify there was no one matching her description at the scene when they came for you. There was no one there at all.”  
“You haven’t found her? In three weeks.”  
The pain in her side is growing, burning in waves through her stomach.  
“We haven’t looked.”  
“Why?”  
Carolyn pauses, frowns, not like she is trying to read Eve’s thoughts but that she already knows them and is simply trying to understand.  
“We have no further use for Villanelle,” she says, then, “Not currently.”  
“She shot me. Surely that deserves some sort of warrant for her arrest?”  
“You stabbed her, Eve, and we didn’t arrest you. She was a useful resource and we may need her again. We'll find her when that occasion arises.”  
“Where’s Hugo?”  
“Worse condition than you I’m afraid and still in Rome. But we think he’ll make it.”  
“Konstantin?”  
“He held up his end of the bargain. So, he is also gone. For now, anyway.”  
Eve tightens her hands into fists under the blankets.  
“Dear God. I need pain medication. Now.”  
“Press that little button at the side of your bed,” Carolyn says. Eve presses it and within seconds a nurse enters the room and starts fiddling with the tubes connected to Eve’s hands.  
Carolyn gets up and smooths down her already smooth suit with her palms, “We better have the rest of this conversation another time. I really came to say that when you are feeling better Eve, and up it, we are ready to have you back at MI6.”  
Eve stares at her, head spinning, and then says, “But there isn’t any work for me to do. Not anymore.”  
“Oh, there is plenty more work for you to do,” she says. Carolyn then leans over to the nurse and quietly says Thank you, before picking up her coat from the back of the chair and walking out.  
“Wait, Carolyn,” Eve says.  
Her boss stops and turns around.  
“There you go darling,” the nurse says, “you’ll feel the effects of that soon.”  
“Will it numb it again? I need it to numb it.”  
“Yeah,” the nurse says, “Don’t you worry. I’ll leave you two alone.”  
“Please shut the door,” Eve says. The nurse smiles and pulls the door closed behind her.  
Carolyn waits, hands together at her front, for Eve to speak.  
“There was a guy. In the hotel.”  
“A guy?”  
“Ugly, British guy. Ginger.”  
“Ah, yes.”  
“He tried to kill Villanelle,” Eve says.  
“Don’t worry, Eve,” Carolyn says, “It seems she got to him first. Oh, by the way I left you some of that moisturizer. Pig placenta? It’s on your bedside table,” and then leaves before Eve can say anything else. She calls for the nurse again.  
“Still in pain, darling? It will take a while for it to kick in. Hang in there.”  
“Do you know what they did with my phone?”  
“Who?”  
“Carolyn, Niko, I don’t know. I had my phone on me when I was shot.”  
The nurse puts on an overly concerned frown, “I’m sorry but I don’t know. The police might have taken it? I’m sure you’ll get it back when you’re out of hospital. Or your husband might have it. He might be able to get it.”  
“Has Niko visited?”  
“Every evening,” she says. She’s got a soft face and easy smile and Eve suddenly gets the urge to pick up Carolyn’s plastic chair and hit her square over the head with it.  
“Has anyone else visited?”  
“Just the business lady who was here earlier.”  
“That’s it?”  
“Were you expecting someone?”  
“I need my phone. Please. A phone. Any phone.”  
“There is a phone in the hallway for patients.”  
“Do I look like I can move?”  
The nurse looks like she might cry, and Eve feels bad in the way old Eve might have, happily married Eve, assistant Eve, adjusted Eve.  
“I know you’re in pain, Mrs Polastri, but please don’t take it out on me.”  
Eve lifts her hands to her head and scrapes her fingers through her hair.  
“I’m sorry,” she says, “I just,” she drops her hands to her side, “I’m helpless.”  
The nurse comes over and sits down on the side of Eve’s bed, gently, so not to hurt her. She puts her hand into the pocket of her scrubs and pulls out an iPhone.  
“Look, you can use mine. But you have to promise not to tell anyone. We aren’t allowed them on shift. Two minutes.”  
“Oh my God, thank you.”  
Eve takes the phone and it opens up to picture of the nurse and a weedy guy with glasses posing on a sofa with a cat in between them.  
“Erm, passcode?” Eve says and holds the phone out for the nurse to tap in a number Eve assumes is her cat’s birthday. “Thank you. Nice cat by the way.”  
“Two minutes.”  
When the nurse has gone, Eve types in the number. She memorized it when Villanelle was at her first meeting with Aaron Peel. Just in case, she’d thought at the time, staring at the phone and waiting for it to ring and for Villanelle to tell her it all went well. During that time Eve found herself going over the numbers, repeating them in a whisper as she poured coffee and paced the kitchen.  
She puts the phone to her ear and holds her breath. Villanelle could have dumped her phone in a river, smashed it with a hammer, broken it to pieces and scattered it, anything. It rings.  
It rings a total of fourteen times before the voicemail clicks on. Eve’s breath hitches waiting for her voice, or an automated one, or a stranger. Instead music, crackling, like it has been recorded of an old tape deck or radio:  
_Shot through the heart, and you’re to blame, Darling you give love a bad name ___  
Eve drums her fingers on the back of the phone until the song stops and the beep sounds for the message.  
“Ha. Very funny. You know what fuck you. Fuck. You.” is all she says, and then she hangs up.  
After that the nurse leaves her to rest. She closes her eyes and all she can see is Raymond’s head, split open on the grubby hotel carpet. She thinks of the moments before that, of Villanelle choking, struggling for breath, her eyes begging Eve for help.  
Except she wasn’t begging for help. She had a gun. The whole time. She could have saved herself as usual. She didn’t need Eve. Eve had murdered for nothing. Saved her for nothing. Murdered. Eve had murdered someone. When this all started, she told Carolyn she was interested in what drove a woman to murder. What had driven her? Defense of course. That was it. She didn’t know Villanelle had the gun, she thought she was saving her. Eve murdered someone to protect Villanelle. She closes her eyes, Raymond’s splattered head, Villanelle’s blood-stained face behind them and lets the relief of the pain medication take over her entire body until she smiles.


	2. Dancing til I feel okay

GOLD COAST, AUSTRALIA

 

Villanelle is fucked. She did a line of what she was told was coke in the toilets about ten minutes ago and she feels fucking fantastic. She is dancing in the middle of the floor when the guy who gave her the drugs, and his girlfriend, whose hand she snorted it off, say they are leaving and ask her back to their hotel room. She grabs the girl by her wrist and pulls her close, and she can smell the sweat and suntan cream on the girl’s skin.

“Dance first,” Villanelle yells over the music.   

“We’re going now,” the girl says, leaning in, her lipstick smacking in Villanelle’s ear.

“Fuck you then,” she says back into her ear and then bites it quickly and lightly before going back to dancing.

“Take care of yourself kid,” the guy yells. He’s a huge muscly Australian dude with no shirt on and sweat in his pecks and she could fucking kill him right here, right now if she wanted to but she just stares at them as they walk away, rolling her eyes at the girl when the guy’s back is turned.

Tonight, she has bigger fish to fry anyway. She has started a game with this girl she met in a bar a couple of days ago. She’s small and dark and her name is Kendall and she does whatever Villanelle says, she’s kind of like a dim blank canvas, and that is what she likes about her. She’s interested in how a person like her lives, not really understanding things to the level most other people do. Does Kendall think any less? Is she happier?

_Your place tonight?_ Kendall had text her earlier that evening. Villanelle’s place is a hotel room on the top floor of the high-rise Marriott overlooking the sea. After she’d shot Eve and called the ambulance for her in her best upper-class London accent, Villanelle had got back into the car, driven to the airport, bought an empty suitcase and some shitty airport clothes, and got on the next plane to Australia. As she bought her ticket, she could hear Konstantin’s voice in her head, “Australia? Like with the snakes and surfers? That’s not really your style, Villanelle.” But that was the point.

_No._ Villanelle had text back to Kendall _Going out._

She bought a new phone when she got to Australia which she uses for texting people she’s met here but she’s changed her answering machine recording on her old one, a special message for Eve, and she still keeps it fully charged and on her at all times.

_Where to?_

_Find me._

Kendall still hasn’t shown up yet but she can’t be far as Villanelle’s been texting her little clues about where she might be. Now she is getting bored of waiting so she takes out her phone and sends a blurry picture of the bar to hurry her along.

_I’m making it easy for you so you owe me._ She sends with the picture.

Then she dances. There are loads of people around her and she can feel thighs and elbows and t shirts brushing up against her but it also feels like she is completely alone in the middle of the dance floor. All she feels is the music and her heartbeat and the swimming of her head which gets so strong her has to close her eyes, so she doesn’t get too dizzy and loose her balance. She’s been drinking since Kendall left for work this morning; whisky neat straight out of a hotel mug because if she keeps sober for too long, stops drinking, stops fucking, she gets angry, so angry that she wants to squeeze the life out of someone. The point is to lay low, and not cause a scene, but as the days go by and her phone stays silent she is beginning to think that no one is coming, no one is looking for her and she thinks that maybe that should make her feel free but instead she feels like she may suffocate if she stops and thinks about it too much. On the plane as she slept, she dreamt of Eve saying no to her and she has decided that she can’t fucking have that. If she drinks, she dreams of nothing.

She feels a tug on her arm before she hears Kendall yelling “Ruby,” over the music. That’s what she told Kendall her name was. She also told her she was a dancer from Malibu and she told her one night stand from three nights ago she was a PhD student from Perth and she told the coke couple from earlier she was a nanny from York who got bored of the British countryside. Her real job, which she isn’t sure she has anymore, hasn’t rung her either. Not the twelve, not MI6, not Konstantin.

“Jesus, Ruby, how fucked are you?” Kendall says.

Villanelle just laughs, a loud and manic laugh, grabbing hold of Kendall by the waist and the shoulder and Kendall laughs with her for a while and then she starts to frown slightly too.

“Cut it out,” Kendall says.

Villanelle stops laughing abruptly.

“What did you just say to me?” she says, stern even though she’s slurring a little, her face dropping into a deadpan expression.

“Nothing,” Kendall says, “Sorry.”

Is she happier?

“Bathroom,” Villanelle says, tightening her grasp on her waist. “Now.”

 In the bathroom, Villanelle pushes her into a stall, slams her into the wall and starts kissing her.

“You found me, well done, but now you do what I say yes?” Villanelle says, pinching the skin on Kendall’s arm and kissing her neck.“Yes,” Kendall says and then when she goes to say something else Villanelle holds her hand in front of her face and says, “No.” Kendall smilles. She likes this game. 

She leaves the toilet stall and sees herself in the mirror, hair everywhere and top untucked from the waist of her shorts. Wild. She hears someone snort something in the next stall along so she pushes the door and finds three girls there doing more coke.

“Give me some.”

The girls all look at each other and then back at Villanelle and Kendall who has crept up behind her and is peering over her shoulder.

“Who are you?” One of the girls says with a sneer. Villanelle sighs and gets couple hundred dollars out her back pocket and throws it at them.

“Give me some,” she says again.

The girls shrug and say okay and Villanelle does three more lines and Kendall does one.

“Thank you,” Villanelle says and gives them a curtsey on the way out, “Be safe ladies, have a good night.”

She grabs Kendall by the wrist again and drags her out onto the dance floor for a bit and then back to her hotel room.

 

Villanelle is going down on her, concentrating because she’s finding it hard not to see black and pass out, hand clamped over Kendall’s mouth because she is a screamer, when her phone rings. It takes her a second to realise it’s her old phone in her left pocket.

“Don’t stop,” Kendall says, when Villanelle suddenly sits up straight. She takes her phone out her pocket and sees the number: Unknown.

“Ruby?” Kendall says, pulling her skirt down and sitting up. Villanelle is staring at her phone.

“Shut up,” she says, and she watches as the phone stops ringing. She waits a few seconds longer, staring at the screen, a black screenshot, another change that she made after landing in Australia. The voicemail alert pops and relief washes through Villanelle like the waves crashing on the beach outside. Finally. Finally something is happening. Her real life.

“Don’t say a word,” Villanelle says to Kendall and dials the voicemail, smirking as she imagines Eve listening to the song. You’re too late. I’m gone.

“Ha. Very funny. You know what, fuck you. Fuck. You.”

Ten words. Eve’s voice. Villanelle hangs up. She feels sick and she doesn’t know what with. Kendall gets up off the bed and slides her arms around her from the back.

“That sounded bad, Ruby,” she says, “I can make you feel better?”           

Villanelle ducks out of her embrace, goes to the mini bar and pours a drink and holds it, staring at the painting on the wall behind the other girl’s head.

“She doesn’t know what she’s missing,” Kendall says.

“Ha,” Villanelle says, and downs her drink. She blacks out sometime later.

             

When she wakes up she can tell by the strength of the sun that its already afternoon. She turns in bed and sees a bucket next to her, the bed sheets on the floor, an untouched glass of water on the bedside table. She is wearing her outfit from last night. Her head kills.

Kendall appears from the bathroom in one of Villanelle’s dresses.

“Hey, feeling rough?”

“What happened?”       

“Your ex called, remember? You didn’t take it very well.”

“My what?”

“Your ex, you know, the one you were in love with and she left you. She called and it depressed the fuck out of you so we drank and you passed out.”

“How do you know that?”

“What?”

“About Eve?”

Her name feels soft in her mouth. Villanelle has always liked the sound of it, even when she doesn’t like Eve herself. Saying it out loud makes her realise that there is no point in anything she is doing right now, that moving forward, forgetting, isn’t going to work, she needs some other option desperately, something different desperately.

“You told me, Ruby, you were going on about it all night. I mean, it’s not exactly flattering for me, but I get it, I get what we are and all…”

“Get out.”

“What?”

“I said get out."

“But I looked after you. You were sick on my clothes. I listened to you whine about some stupid other woman who to be honest doesn’t seem all that into you anymore….” 

Villanelle takes the glass of water off her bedside table and throws it at Kendall’s head. She ducks and it smashes against the wall and shatters, water spraying everywhere and glass getting in Kendall’s wet hair.

“Get out!” she screams.

Kendall stares at her for a second. “You’re a fucking nutcase, Ruby,” she says, as she gathers her sodden clothes from the floor, “You belong in some sort of hospital somewhere.” She slams the door on the way out. Villanelle knows Kendall will probably text her tonight anyway. 

Villanelle gets her phone, her real phone, and listens to the message again. She didn’t kill her. She knew that, she wasn’t trying to. She aimed for the spot where Eve stabbed her first. But now she feels like fucking killing Eve if it would just get her out of her head.


End file.
